Liar, liar, pants SHOULD BE on fire
By Herb Drill
Aside from what’s been promised to the disabled, you remember the three great lies: “The check’s in the mail,” “Sure, I’ll
respect you in the morning,” and No. 3, well … this is a family Internet magazine so we’ll let that one pass.
In today’s business culture, which is certainly chaotic, if not indisputably disreputable, there are more lies: One of the
biggest is that U.S. productivity is rising. Sure, more is getting done by fewer employees fearful of downsizing to improve earnings per
share and stock prices. Then, you must consider the rising rate of incompetence. How much of that work has to be redone because
of errors, how much has to be un-done due to employee negligence or lack of concern?
Along comes Art Kleiner, research director of the Cambridge, MA-based Dialogos consulting firm with some other biggies:
"The customer comes first" is one of the three great lies of the modern corporation, Kleiner claims in a recent cover story in Across The Board, the Conference Board magazine. The other two gigantic fibs are: "We make our decisions on behalf of our shareholders" and "Employees are our most important asset."
Kleiner contends that in the wake of “corporate scandals and the 'jobless' semi-recession, none of these lines are
persuasive," but there is always some group of people on whose behalf the company operates. These are the people who really
matter, who set the organization's
direction and drive its behavior." He argues this core group doesn’t necessarily include the people at the top of the organization chart,
and it generally includes only a handful of the board of directors.
Despite conventional wisdom which says the board and the half-dozen top executives are the people who run the company,
the reality, Kleiner contends, is that every organization has a hierarchy grounded not in informal power but "informal legitimacy." It
overlaps with the authorized hierarchy, comprising the people who are truly responsible for the success or failure of the organization
itself, whether they know it or not.
"You probably know who the members are in your organization," notes Kleiner. "They're the people who come to mind when
an initiative begins to circulate. They possess the ability to green light or kill a project and they're the ones whose interests therefore
must be taken into account early in the process. Some have gained power and influence within the organization through their title and position, while others have it through their political smarts."
Kleiner maintains every company's core group differs in number, breadth, focus, and deviance from the top of the
organization chart. In high-tech start-ups, the core group often consists of the engineers who had the original vision, plus the
financiers. The core group sets the organization's direction. The organization becomes whatever its people perceive the core group
needs and wants it to become. If a goal is perceived as irrelevant to the core group, then it will not be reached, no matter how worthy
it is, how ardently it is advocated, or how many rules and governance structures hold the organization accountable